Little Boy Lost
by theUglySpirit
Summary: Mrs. Curtis comes upon a little boy wandering lost in the neighborhood. One-shot. Takes place pre-novel by about 14 years.


SE Hinton owns The Outsiders.

I wrote this two years ago when my son was three. He's going to be five in a couple of days. Was'te c'idake, c'aske miye.

**Little Boy Lost**

Walking to and from the grocery without three boys in tow is a secret, guilty pleasure for Maggie. Yet, on the one day when her husband has taken all three of them to visit their grandparents and she can go to the store alone, she finds herself following another small boy.

She spotted him first when she was on her way into Jackson's. She hadn't thought much of it. Maybe his mother was inside. Navigating those narrow aisles with even one little guy can be a trick, she knows. A few times, she has told Darry to stay outside with Sodapop and name the colors of the cars that drive by. With just the baby riding in the cart, she can shop with two hands and her whole mind free.

When she comes back out of the store, the boy seems to have disappeared, and Maggie thinks nothing more of it until she comes upon him again two blocks later. He is trying with all of his might to open the passenger door of a car parked along the curb.

He is taller than her middle son, but his movements are still those of a toddler. He can't be much older than Sodapop. He is tugging at the handle of the car door with his whole body, but one of his feet is also braced against it. He is holding the door shut himself and doesn't know it.

She kneels down at the edge of the sidewalk. She doesn't want to get too close and frighten him. When he sees her out of the corner of his eye and stops pulling at the door, she waves.

"Hi, what are you doing there?"

"I drive it. This car," he answers. His way of constructing a sentence is just like Soda's.

"You're going to drive it? Do you have the keys?" She decides not to call his small stature into question, lest she should offend him.

He shakes his head and takes a step towards her. "Do you have keys?"

"No. This isn't my car. What's your name?"

"Stevie."

She extends her hand to him and he shakes it. "Hi, Stevie. It's nice to meet you. I'm Maggie."

"Maggie?" He repeats.

She nods. "That's right. Maggie. Is this your daddy's car?"

"No. My daddy, he's at my house. We ain't got a car."

"Is your mama at home?"

"Ain't got a mama. My daddy, he's at my house."

Maggie looks around at the houses for some sign that someone is watching this child, but no one is standing on a porch or visible through a window. She turns back to Stevie.

"Which house do you live in?"

"It's white. Like this-" He kicks at the pale concrete of the sidewalk.

Maggie smiles. She thinks the comparison is clever. "Why don't you show me? I'll walk with you."

For the first time, the boy's stance becomes guarded. He frowns and shakes his head. "I don't want to."

"But your daddy might be worried. If he can't see you, he might think you're lost." She pauses. She doesn't want to say his daddy might be scared. She knows her boys would argue if someone tried to tell them their daddy was scared of anything. "Your daddy would be sad if you were lost."

The boy looks skeptical. He shakes his head and kicks again at the sidewalk. He looks back at the car as though it is tempting him in a voice that Maggie can't hear.

She tries again. "Come on. I'll walk with you. Show me which house is yours."

She stands up and holds out her hand. He doesn't take it, but the idea that she might be willing to walk off without him is too much for the boy. He says, "this way," softly and motions for her to follow him.

"How old are you, Stevie?"

"This many," he says and holds up three fingers. It is a difficult maneuver for him to separate those first three fingers and walk at the same time. Like walking and chewing gum. Maggie smiles and widens her eyes to show she is impressed. Inside, she is horrified. He's only three. He is only as old as Sodapop, and Soda still can't remember to come inside and use the toilet without being reminded. He certainly can't be left to roam the neighborhood by himself.

Stevie adds, "then it will be my birthday. Pretty soon." So he's almost four. He adds, "and I can run fast. See?"

He starts to run. Maggie jogs alongside him. "You can run fast. You're going to outrun me."

"Yeah, because I'm fast."

He turns to cross the street and Maggie holds her hand out to stop him before he runs out into traffic.

"Stop. Watch for cars," she tells him.

"They're fast. Those cars go fast," he says.

"That's right. You have to watch for them. You have to be careful," she tells him, but he isn't listening. Stevie is watching the cars and saying, "vrroooom," under his breath. _Just like Soda would be_, she thinks. Maggie smiles.

They cross the street and Stevie leads her to a side street. There is only one white, concrete-colored house on the block and Maggie guesses it must be his. She calculates in her head how far from home the boy was- about tfour blocks. She doesn't even let Soda out of the yard by himself.

Stevie's family doesn't have much of a yard. It is a small square of yellowed, late-spring-in-Oklahoma grass. There is a deflating basketball and a toy wagon that could use a new coat of paint. As she comes closer, Maggie sees that the wagon could also use a new rear left wheel.

She starts up the walk, but realizes when she gets to the steps up to the porch that Stevie is no longer beside her. He is hanging back on the sidewalk, watching her and frowning.

"No. I don't go in," he says.

Maggie surveys his face for clues. Is he just not done playing outside or is he going to get in trouble? How much trouble is he going to be in? Is Stevie's dad the kind of man who would thrash his son for wandering away? Maggie can't tell from the boy's face.

She tells him, "I want to meet your daddy. I want to let him know you're home. You can still play here in the yard. We just don't want him to be worried, remember?"

Stevie nods. When she knocks on the door, he says, "no one's home."

Maggie frowns. "Is anyone there?"

The silence both from Stevie and from within her house seems to be her answer. Maggie furrows her brow. Now she has no idea what to do. She looks around for a neighbor who might know the boy, but sees no one. She is about a block from Doreen Mathews' house. Maybe Doreen's son, Keith, plays with Stevie and Doreen has seen him before. She is just stepping off the porch when the screen door opens and a woman peeks out.

She is younger than Maggie. Her hair is down and she looks like she dressed in a hurry.

"Hi," Maggie says. "I'm Margaret Curtis. I just live a few of blocks over. I found your Stevie over by my place. I was afraid he might be lost, so I walked him home. Are you his mama?"

The other woman shrugs and smiles. "I'm his aunt," she replies, as though she's not really sure if she's his aunt or not. "I'll get his dad."

"Thanks," Maggie says. She watches Stevie out of the corner of her eye. He has made no move to run, but he hasn't come any closer to the house either. Another long few minutes passes. When the door finally opens, the man who steps out is also young, but he has the puffy, pock-marked face of someone who has been drinking hard for a long time.

Maggie says, confused, "Are you his father?"

The young man shakes his head. Maggie turns to Stevie, "Is this your brother?"

"It's Uncle," Stevie says. He takes a few steps into the yard now, towards the dying basketball. He picks it up and climbs up on to the porch with it.

Feeling only a little relieved, Maggie turns to the young man. "I walked him home. He was on the journey of a lifetime."

The uncle shakes his head. He seems more amused than concerned, but at least- Maggie thinks- he doesn't seem angry. "He does that."

"Okay, then," Maggie kneels again to speak to Stevie. "Okay, you stay here and play with your uncle now. Remember, you can't wander off or your daddy will be sad."

Stevie nods. "The cars is fast. Bye-bye, Maggie."

"Bye-bye, Stevie. It was nice to meet you." She stands and says to the uncle, "Bye."

He just looks at her blankly. Stevie throws the basketball to him and he misses the catch. Maggie hurries down the walk and back towards her own house. She can't stop thinking about her own boys and how it probably wouldn't be a good idea to ask them if they know how lucky they are. Do they know? They have a father who is spending his entire day off from work all on them, and there are other kids whose fathers can't even be troubled to come to the door to check on their sons.

Maggie arrives back at her own house and steps through the gate. She sits down on her porch and stares out at the disheveled neighborhood around her. _Someday_, she thinks, _Sodapop is going to go to school with that boy. My boy, who I tell the sun rises and sets for him, is going to go to school with kids who don't know if anyone cares about them at all._ The idea confounds her. Her husband and the other men she knows tease her that she babies the boys. They tell her that they need to learn to be tough, learn how to fight and defend themselves. In the safety of their own yard, there's no need for it. Maybe, though, her husband is right. Maybe her boys need to be tougher if they're going to be out in a world with boys who have never had anyone treat them so gently.

She is jarred out of her thoughts by the sound of a small voice. She knows it is him before she sees him heading down the other side of her street towards the empty lot at the end of the block. Stevie is singing softly to himself. The tune is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", but the words are his own invention. He doesn't see Maggie. He is singing about cars. No doubt he is going to the lot to inspect the carcass of an abandoned Ford that sits there.

Maggie watches him and deliberates in her own head to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". _Should I, should I call someone? How I wonder where his parents are?_

She knows she can't just take him home again. He'll be back wandering on his own within minutes. It's getting dark. It's early April, and the nights are still chilly. She had to argue with Darry to take a jacket when he left the house with his father this morning. Sodapop had left his by the door, twice, and she finally just put it in the car herself before they left.

Maggie stands and goes into the house. She goes to the telephone, rings for the operator, and asks for the police station. When the call is finished, she goes back to the porch to make sure that Stevie hasn't wandered out of sight. He hasn't. He has climbed on to the hood of the Ford and his hanging over the side, looking under one of the wheel wells. Maggie smiles, in spite of knowing what is coming. She loves to watch boys, her own and any boys, inspect their surroundings. She could spend hours just watching them and wondering what is going on in their heads.

The police car arrives more quickly that she anticipated. It pulls up to the lot slowly, and to her surprise, Stevie is delighted to see it. He doesn't yet have the fear of policemen that the older children in the neighborhood possess. The officer steps out of the car and, just as Maggie had done, kneels to Stevie's level to talk to him. They talk for a minute or two and then the officer ushers Stevie around to the passenger side and puts Stevie in the front seat. They drive away. Maggie feels ill.

She remains sitting on the porch, staring at the now-empty lot. _What did you do that for_? She thinks to herself. _He would have been fine. He was just playing on that old car._ She knows, in her gut, that things are not fine with Stevie or at his house. It was the right thing to do, and yet she hurts thinking about him spending the night in an unfamiliar bed in the boy's home.

Her husband's car pulls up in front of the house and blocks her view of the lot. Darrel gets out and then opens the back door and picks up the baby, who is sleeping. Little Darrel- Darry- climbs sleepily out of the front passenger door.

"Hi, mom," he says as he passes her. "Grandpa took us to see horses. Soda got scared. He wouldn't ride one by himself. I had to hold him."

Maggie reaches out to touch his hair. "He is kind of little, son. He still needs your help. Did you have a good time?"

Darry says something, his tone is positive but exhausted. He is already inside the house and on his way to bed. His father comes up the walk, the sleeping baby in his arms. He leans in to kiss Maggie's cheek but then pulls away and asks, "what's wrong?"

"Where's Sodapop?"

"He's still in the car. Passed out. Been either climbing something or crying about wanting to climb something all day long. Here, take Pony. I'll go get him."

Maggie shakes her head. "That's okay. I'm okay. I'll tell you later…I'll get him."

She brushes past her husband, who continues on into the house, and hurries down the walk towards the car. When she reaches it, she opens the rear door, but instead of pulling the sleeping boy out, she slides into the seat next to him. She pulls him into her lap and cradles him for a second, leaning in to smell his hair and kiss his soft forehead.

When she kisses him, Sodapop opens his eyes and gives her a bleary smile. Maggie remembers hearing the expression "his eyes danced" many times, but she never knew what it meant until she had this boy. His eyes are always dancing, even when he's dog-tired.

"Mama," he says.

"Hi, baby," she whispers. Her hand flutters to her cheek to catch her tears before they fall on him. Then she reaches back down and cups his perfect smiling face.

Only half awake, he reaches up and- imitating her- lays his hand against her cheek. "Mama, I got you," he says.

"I got you, baby," she tells him and sits with him there in the back of the car until he falls back to sleep.


End file.
